Unboxing the Sony A77 Mark II by John Sison

Three new cameras will ship within the next 2-3 weeks: The A77II, A7s and RX100M3. Here are the full preorder links and after that a couple of new interesting tests:
Sony A7s preorder in USA/CA at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony USA, Sony Canada.
Sony A7s EU pages: Sony DE, UK, ES, FR, IT, NL, BE, AT, CH, SE, NO, FI, PL. And Wex UK.
RX100M3 preorders in USA at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony USA.
RX100M3 preorders in Eu at Sony DE, UK, ES, FR, IT, NL, BE, AT, CH, SE, NO, FI, PT. And Wex UK,
RX100M3 in Asia at Amazon Japan and Sony Australia.
Sony A77 body in USA at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Sony Store (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Sony A77 with 16-50mm lens at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), Sony Store (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Sony A77 body in Europe at Sony Germany, Sony UK, Sony France, Sony IT, ES, NL, BE, AT, CH, PT, NO, SE, FI and Wex UK.
Sony A77 in Asia at Digitalrev and Sony Australia.

A77II
Photographyblog posted the full A77II review and writes:

Sony may have been lavishing most of their time an attention on their E-Mount and full-frame mirrorless cameras of late, but the new Sony A77 II is a lot more than just a slight upgrade of the original model, offering more than enough new features, improved performance and continued excellent image quality to be awarded our coveted Essential! rating.

RX100M3
Luminous Landscape tested the RX100M3 and says that “the Best Pro-Level Pocket Camera Simply Gets Better“. And DPreview added some more RX100M3 image samples.

A7s:
Photoblog.hk posted some early High ISO JPG and these are two 100% crops:

Image courtesy: Photoblog.hk.

There is also a German review of the A7s at Chip.de.

Sample image with 100% crop.

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SAR note: This is a guest post. Feel free to share your story or review at sonyalpharumors@gmail.com. Thanks!

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A second opinion on the Sony Zeiss FE 24-70mm f4 lens  (by Stefan Grosjean)

We have all read the reviews. They all seem to agree that the Zeiss Zoom for Full-Frame E-mount Cameras is somewhat “disappointing”: (1) It’s not fast enough, (2) the corners are not sharp, (3) the distortion is heavy, and (4) it’s also too big, too heavy and too expensive.
The Sony Zeiss 55mm lens in contrast was received very well. Reviews agreed that it’s an “excellent” lens. With f1.8 it’s quite fast, it’s sharp across the entire frame even full open, and there’s almost no distortion to speak of (but it’s also rather expensive and not really small).
What’s interesting to me is the fact that both lenses have actually more or less the same low light ability although they do it very differently: The Prime has an aperture that is 2.3 stops brighter, the Zoom has an optical steady shot which is supposed to allow for 2-3 stops longer exposure times – which gives you about the same brightness. So let’s do a very quick and simple test and see how the “disappointing” zoom lens and the “excellent” prime lens perform under poor lighting conditions.
For this test the 55mm was full open at f1.8 with exposure time being 1/160sec. If there’s no steady shot I always chose 1/160 or faster to be sure most of my images turn out sharp (I guess my hands are pretty shaky). The 24-70mm was full open at f4 with an exposure time of 1/30 and 1/40. Steady shot was activated. Focal length was set to 55mm and all the other settings were also the same. The light source was a window on a rainy day. ISO speeds were at 800 (comparison 1) respectively 1600 (comparison 2). All photos were shot by hand without using a tripod. The autofocus field (size M) was set to the very corner because that’s where we have to expect the most significant differences. Photos are JPGs shot from my a7.

into the darkness – SONY α7S 4K shoot

You remember Stanley Kubrick shooting with a f/0.7 special Zeiss lens to shoot a Barry Lindon scene with the sole candle light? Well, that’s what you can do now with the new Sony A7s (which will ship soon). The video on top has been shot by Yoshihiro Enatsu and shows you the A7s performance with the light of one single candle. Below is another low light video:

Also Photoblog.hk posted two new videos: A Frame rate speed test (youtube video here) and an Autofocus test (youtube video here).

A7s and RX100M3 Preorders:
Sony A7s preorder in USA/CA at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony USA, Sony Canada.
Sony A7s EU pages: Sony DE, UK, ES, FR, IT, NL, BE, AT, CH, SE, NO, FI, PL. And Wex UK.
RX100M3 preorders in USA at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, Sony USA.
RX100M3 preorders in Eu at Sony DE, UK, ES, FR, IT, NL, BE, AT, CH, SE, NO, FI, PT. And Wex UK,
RX100M3 in Asia at Amazon Japan and Sony Australia.